U.S. Attorneys

Rove Emails Spotlight White House Role in U.S. Attorney Firing

Kate Klonick | September 29, 2008, 6:35PM

The IG report released today provides new details on the White House's involvement in the firings of U.S. attorneys, especially the administration's involvement in the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

Prior to Iglesias' removal on Dec. 7, 2006, New Mexico GOP Sen. Pete Domenici had already made multiple complaints to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales about Iglesias. In addition, Mickey Barnett, a former GOP New Mexico state senator and a prominent lawyer, had met in Washington with DOJ White House Liason Monica Goodling to discuss his problems with Iglesias' handling of voter fraud cases.

But emails disclosed in the recently released IG report between Barnett, Domenici and White House political operative Karl Rove reveal that the complaints against Iglesias went beyond talks with the Justice Department, and that the White House was aware and involved in the removal of Iglesias from his post as U.S. attorney.

According to today's report, on October 2, 2006, Barnett e-mailed Karl Rove an article from a local paper expressing frustrations with the apparently stalled investigation into bribery of Democratic state Sen. Manny Aragon (NM).

In the email, Barnett blamed Iglesias' office for delaying the case against the Democratic lawmaker, something he had spoken to Goodling, Rove and Domenici about before, according to conversations detailed in the report. Specifically, Barnett and Rove had previously discussed "kick[ing Iglesias]. . . upstairs" as a way to get rid of him.

The October 2 email from Barnett to Rove again mentions the possibility of a "promotion" for Iglesias, and their face to face discussion of it the weekend before at a Republican fundraiser in New Mexico.

From page 173 of the report:

Karl,
This article confirms what I mentioned Saturday. An FBI agent told me more than six months ago that their investigation was done and been turned over to the US Attorney a long time ago. He said agents were totally frustrated with some even trying to get out
of New Mexico. I can put you or anyone you designate with lawyers knowledgeable about the US Atty office - including lawyers in the office - that will show how poorly it is being run.
Scott Jennings was kind enough to set up an appointment at the Justice Department several months ago where Pat Rogers and I laid all this out. I hope Justice can now be persuaded to send out some cracker jack prosecutor and perhaps promote Iglesias to a Justice department position.
We still await the results of the task force Iglesias convened about this time two years ago on the clear Acorn fraudulent voter registrations. We were told it would look to [sic] "political" to indict anyone that close to the election. Then we never heard anything else

.

Just a few weeks after Barnett's email, Domenici's chief of staff Steve Bell emailed Rove on Nov. 7, 2006, the day of mid-term Congressional elections complaining about ballot problems in a New Mexico precinct. Bell closed the email with the statement, "We worry about the USA here."

Rove responded just 32 minutes later stating, "I'd have the Senator call the Attorney General about this."

Exactly one month later, Iglesias was fired.

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Topics: Alberto Gonzales, David Iglesias, Karl Rove, U.S. Attorneys

David Iglesias

Iglesias: Information on My Firing "Is Going To Have To Be Forced Out Of The Administration."

Zachary Roth | September 29, 2008, 2:16PM

David Iglesias, the former US attorney whose dismissal was deemed the "most troubling" in today's IG report, says he still wants to see the full range of evidence about the White House's possible role in the firing. That includes all relevant emails and notes from meetings -- information the White House held back from the IG's investigators.

"That's the critical bit of information that we don't have right now," Iglesias told TPMmuckraker. He added: "I suspect that the information is going to have to be forced out of the administration."

Still, the former U.S. attorney said he feels vindicated by the report's conclusion that he was removed not because of managerial deficiencies but thanks to political pressure from the office of GOP senator Pete Domenici and New Mexico Republican activists. That conclusion "is consistent with what I've been saying all along," he said.

Iglesias stressed that he was heartened by the Justice Department's appointment of a prosecutor, Nora Dannehy, in the case. "I"m glad that DOJ is taking this seriously," he said.

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Topics: David Iglesias, Justice Department, U.S. Attorneys

David Iglesias

White House, DOJ, Domenici Stonewalled IG On Iglesias Firing

Zachary Roth | September 29, 2008, 11:43AM

The just-released IG report on the US attorney firings lists the removal of David Iglesias as the "most troubling" of the eight. But it notes that thanks to stonewalling by the White House, DOJ officials, and the office of Sen. Pete Domenici, investigators didn't have access to the complete range of information on the reasons for the firing.

The report concludes that Iglesias was removed as a result of complaints brought to DOJ by New Mexico GOP members of Congress and party activists, and shows that Karl Rove knew in advance of the decision. It reveals that at a meeting on November 15, 2006, Rep. Heather Wilson told Rove: "Mr. Rove, for what it's worth, the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico is a waste of breath." Rove's response: ""That decision has already been made. He's gone."

But it states that IG investigators were unable to determine how Rove knew this (Iglesias wasn't notifed until December 7), and what his possible role in the decision was, because Rove and White House counsel Harriet Miers refused to cooperate with the investigation.

Similarly, it notes that Kyle Sampson, who as chief of staff to Alberto Gonzales took the lead in bringing about the firings, gave "misleading after-the-fact explanations for why Iglesias was placed on the list." The report concludes: "[W]e question whether Sampson provided us the full story about Iglesias's placement on the list, as well as the reasons for other U.S. Attorney removals."

And: "Our investigation was also hindered by the refusal of Senator Domenici and his Chief of Staff to agree to an interview by us." (In April, Domenici, who is retiring this year, received a "qualified admonition" from the Senate ethics committee for his role in the firing.)

Looks like the across-the-board effort to withhold information from the IG investigators was perhaps at its most intense in regard to the Iglesias firing.

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Topics: DOJ Office Of The Inspector General, David Iglesias, Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, U.S. Attorneys

U.S. Attorneys

Report Recommends Appointment of Special Prosecutor

Kate Klonick | September 29, 2008, 10:30AM

The IG report released today requests a special prosecutor to continue the work of the investigation into whether the nine U.S. attorneys removed in 2006 were fired for partisan political reasons.

From page 357 and 358 of the IG report:

The most serious allegation that we were not able to fully investigate related to the removal of David Iglesias, the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico, and the allegation that he was removed to influence voter fraud and public corruption prosecutions. We recommend that a counsel specially appointed by the Attorney General assess the facts we have uncovered, work with us to conduct further investigation, and ultimately determine whether the evidence demonstrates that any criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of Iglesias or any other U.S. Attorney, or the testimony of any witness related to the U.S. Attorney removals.

Late update: The report also describes the stonewalling the investigation received in trying to gather information on the removals. Specifically, it mentions a "fact memo" created for Alberto Gonzales by the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, which outlined the events chronologically, using a draft written by Michael Scudder, associate White House Counsel. Investigators were refused the timeline by the OLC who claimed they were ordered not to release it by the White House Counsel's office.

From page 94 of the report:

We asked OLC for a copy of the memorandum and all the drafts, but OLC declined, stating that the White House Counsel's Office had directed OLC not to provide them to us. We thereafter engaged in discussions with the White House Counsel's Office during this investigation in an attempt to obtain the Scudder memorandum. The White House Counsel's Office agreed to read one paragraph of the memorandum to us, and provided us with two paragraphs of information concerning Rove that had already been reported publicly, but declined to provide any further information from the memorandum.
Eventually, the White House Counsel's Office provided us with a heavily redacted version of the document. We believe the refusal to provide us with an unredacted copy of this document hampered our investigation.

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Topics: Alberto Gonzales, David Iglesias, U.S. Attorneys

DOJ Office Of The Inspector General

DOJ Report On U.S. Attorney Firings To Be Issued Monday

Zachary Roth | September 26, 2008, 4:07PM

The Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General will on Monday morning release on its website its report into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, according to David Iglesias, one of the former U.S. attorneys whose firing is at issue.

Iglesias told TPMmuckraker that he had been notified about the report's imminent release by Mark Masling, one of the investigators on the case. Iglesias said Masling told him that the report, which has been in the works since March 2007, is "very long" but wouldn't offer further details.

The probe, which centers on the firing of Iglesias and seven other U.S. attorneys, expanded to address allegations that a DOJ official, Monica Goodling, illegally took party affiliation into account in the hiring and firing federal prosecutors.

In July, Iglesias made some predictions about the reports conclusions, telling Harper's:

I expect them to conclude that there is sufficient evidence to show that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty committed perjury in their statements before Congressional committees and investigators.

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Topics: DOJ Office Of The Inspector General, David Iglesias, U.S. Attorneys